24 Jan 2009 @ 00:36
Here we go again, George Mitchell has been appointed by President Obama to aggressively pursue a peace agreement between Israel and its enemies. So far it looks like Obama's going down the same road that his predecessors have gone down, and gone down on. Results are predictable. Sigh! Caroline Glick writes:

"It is a fundamental truth that while history always repeats itself, it
almost never repeats itself precisely. There is always some measure of
newness to events that allows otherwise intelligent people to repeat the
mistakes of their forbearers without looking completely ridiculous."

"Given this, it is hard to believe that with the advent of the Obama
administration, we are seeing history repeat itself with nearly unheard
of precision."

22 Jan 2009 @ 19:56
Regular readers of Thomas Sowell's columns and other writings don't need to be told that nigh everything he writes is worth reading. Here is Sowell on the ascendance of President Obama.

4 Jan 2009 @ 19:56
I fully agree with Jonathan Marks when he writes:
"A war (and Hamas has repeatedly said this is war) is never won if you are disproportionately kind to someone who wants to destroy you and, failing in that, demands with indignation that you not destroy him."

Right now you don't understand why Bill Clinton and George Bush couldn't solve a little thing like the Arab-Israeli conflict, defuse the massive hatred of America in the Middle East, end terrorism or turn radical Islamism into an ideology of peace."

31 Oct 2008 @ 18:02
I consider Caroline Glick one of the sharpest political commentators around. Here's her latest take on the U.S. Presidential Election. She contends that the American media's pro-Obama bias partly results from their misrepresentation of outgoing President George W. Bush's record in office. That misrepresentation cannot be ascribed merely to the leftist sympathies of the media. For the media are not the source of that misrepresentation. Bush himself is the source of that misrepresentation. Brilliant.

8 Oct 2008 @ 19:18
On the eve of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of repentence, tradition has it that a person should ask for a piece of lekach, sweet cake, from a parent, teacher, friend, etc. so as as to receive sweetness in the year to come.

My cyber-lekach doesn't have any calories, and you may ask for it now by clicking here.

6 Oct 2008 @ 22:10
Well, the election for POTUS is only a few weeks away so I've decided to come out of cyber-hibernation (after a number of months of inactivity on this blog) to feature the video below.

I have many friends and family who are voting for Obama. I hope they will watch this, check out the information and tell me where it misses the boat on the economic crisis and how Obama's and the Democrat's policies are going to get us out of it and prevent this kind of boondoggle from happening again.

I was once a big government 'liberal' who became a free-market 'liberal'. But I'm willing to learn and change because I have learned and changed. Tell me why Obama knows better.
More >

"Arieh Handler participated in Israel's birth on two separate occasions.
The lesser event, in his view, was on May 14, 1948, when he was among some
200 persons invited to the Tel Aviv hall where David Ben-Gurion proclaimed
the establishment of the state. Handler, 93 this month, is believed to be
the only one of those present still alive.

"The other occasion took place a month earlier in the auditorium of a
girls' school on Tel Aviv's Rehov Frug. The Va'ad Hapoel Hatzioni, the
parliament of the world Zionist movement, met there for six days to weigh
the imminent departure of the British and the prospect of all-out war.
Handler, a delegate of the religious Hapoel Hamizrahi movement, recalled
in a recent interview the electric atmosphere at that April meeting as the
participants took their places in the small hall, delegates grouped at
separate tables according to party. At the front, facing them, sat
Ben-Gurion and other leaders of the Labor movement, including Golda
Myerson (Meir) and Moshe Shertok (Sharett).

Fighting with Palestinian Arabs was already raging around the country,
Jerusalem was surrounded, and several Arab armies were preparing to invade
in a month on the heels of the departing British. Topping the meeting's
agenda, however, was a political issue - the startling shift in the
position of Washington toward Israel's establishment. President Harry
Truman's approval half a year before of the UN partition proposal, and
America's pressure on other countries to do likewise, had been major
landmarks in the march toward a Jewish state. However, strong objections
from the State Department and American defense officials had brought
second thoughts. More >

Israel's 60th Independence Day is an excuse for the international media
to weigh in on the state of the Jewish state. Given the anti-Israel bias
of most of the international media, not surprisingly, most of the
reports reveal less about Israel's status at 60 than they reveal about
how anti-Zionists perceive Israel at 60.

31 Mar 2008 @ 22:38
Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilder put together a montage about the threat of radical Islam to Non-Muslims and those Muslims—wherever they are—who aren't interested in subjugating Non-Muslims. Simple facts speak loudly. The cowardly powers that be at Network Solutions got frightened and denied Wilders a website for showing the film. Another site, LiveLeak was forced to stop showing it after the company received death threats. YouTube however has not given in to Islamo-fascist threats. Kudos to YouTube. Here's the film:
More >

11 Mar 2008 @ 17:20
[The following article by Cinnamon Stillwell summarizes the problem that lovers of Israel confront. The world has been breathing in an atmosphere of lies about the Jews for a very long time. Most Arab/Muslims don't seem to realize that they are harming themselves as well as the Jews they so hate. So-called 'progressives' have become the willing dupes of the most regressive doctrines and their promoters. The truth will triumph?---how long will it take? - B.I.K ]

A Santa Clara University course optimistically titled, "The Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes," was the setting for a February 26 academic debate on one of the world's most intractable disputes: The Arab/Israeli conflict. More >

3 Dec 2007 @ 05:39
Sixty years ago the U.N. General Assembly ratified a plan to partition what was left of Palestine and establish a Palestinian Jewish state and another Palestinian Arab state. (In 1922, the British had already given to Arabs 80% of the region of Palestine, the land mandated for a Jewish Homeland by the League of Nations after WW I. This is now the state of Jordan.) The Jews accepted the 1947 U.N. decision. The Arabs overwhelmingly rejected it. The Jews of Palestine have been battling for their existence ever since. (They had already been battling for some time.)

In honor of Jewish survival, here is Jordan Chaviv's song, "We Will Survive."

1 Dec 2007 @ 03:51
[Note to potentially pissed-off Muslims: Warren Zevon, who wrote this lovely song is already dead. So threatening him with a death fatwa will have even less effect on him than a death threat will have on me. Don't it make you want to rock and roll? —B.I.K. ]

Everybody's restless and they've got no place to go
Someone's always trying to tell them
Something they already know
So their anger and resentment flow

But don't it make you want to rock and roll
All night long
Mohammed's Radio
I heard somebody singing sweet and soulful
On the radio, Mohammed's Radio.... More >

"Peace is achieved through concessions. We all know that," said embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to crowd of businessmen last week, implying that parts of Jerusalem could be offered to the Palestinians in exchange for peace.

This is not the first time Olmert indicated that he was willing to split up Israel's capital. Last month, he publicly pondered whether it was really "necessary to also add the Shuafat refugee camp, Sawakra, Walaje and other villages and define them as part of Jerusalem."
Drawing from the history of other desperate Israeli prime ministers who have put Israel up on the auction block, Olmert's time in office is probably near its end. More >

11 Oct 2007 @ 01:22
Tamar Yonah of Israel National Radio (where you can find some of the most incisive and biting criticism of Israeli Government Policies and the U.S. Foreign Policy) has written a fine article which pretty much presents my view on George W. [Wimpy?] Bush's and Condoleeza Rice's Arab appeasement policy.

3 Jul 2007 @ 04:50
Alfred Korzybski was born in Warsaw, Poland (then part of the Czarist Russian Empire) on July 3, 1879. I am currently in the process of writing the first full-length biography of the man. Here is a link to a short biography of Korzybski that my wife Susan and I wrote for our book Drive Yourself Sane

I described his work, confusedly (to some) called "general semantics" in the 2004 edition of the General Semantics Bulletin, #71:

The Scientific Philosophy of General Semantics
General Semantics (GS) qualifies as an unusual, tough- to-‘pin down’, interdisciplinary field. “Is it a science or
a philosophy?” Perhaps GS may best be seen as neither ‘science’ nor ‘philosophy’ but rather as both/and––a scientific philosophy applicable moreover to the life concerns of ‘the man and woman in the street’.

In the scientific realm, GS has elements which bring it within the larger field of the behavioral/social sciences.
Here, the main accomplishment of Alfred Korzybski, the original formulator of GS, was theoretical: his integrative theory of human evaluation based on knowledge from a variety of fields. Formulated as a foundation for a new interdisciplinary science of humanity, GS suggests methodological guidelines for all (yes, all) areas of inquiry and has substantive implications for ongoing research on neuro-evaluative, neuro-linguistic factors in human behavior. More >

8 Jun 2007 @ 03:57
The inimitable David Naggar goes to the heart of the serious confusion that guides U.S. State Department thinking about the Middle East:

“The Palestinian issue "is at the core of a lot of problems in the region," Rice said. She said, "There is no substitute for trying to get to the place where the Palestinians finally have their state and the Israelis finally have a neighbor who can live in peace and security with them."

The "Israeli-Palestinian track is extremely important" because it "unlocks the key" to "further engagement between the Arabs and the Israelis," Rice said.” By Jpost.com staff, the Jerusalem Post 5.30/07

"Everyone knows the world we live in is not the way it should be. But no one shows us a picture of how to make this a better world. The best picture is simply when one person meets another. That's all there is to it."
— Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach

"A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul."
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Every individual is a king."
--Ze'ev Vladimir Jabotinsky

"...in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think."
-- Charles S. Peirce

"You will always find some Eskimos ready to instruct the Congolese on how to cope with heat waves."
--Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, not their own facts."
--Daniel Moynihan

"Freedom is not a gift from heaven--one must fight for it every day."
--Simon Wiesenthal

Bruce I. Kodish received a doctorate in Applied Epistemology from the Union Institute and University in 1996. With his wife Susan, he founded the Los Angeles Center for General Semantics where they offer educational and consulting services.

Bruce has also worked as a physical therapist since 1981, and practices posture-movement therapy (McKenzie Method) and education (Alexander Technique).